AGENT Stealth was posing as a stressed-out law student when she lured a clueless NYU law professor to his “death.”

Stealth, the founder of an eco-friendly party supplies company, met the professor at a cafe for coffee. The 24-year-old (her real name is Emily) led him on for 30 minutes until — in a scene straight out of “The Godfather” — she stood up and blasted him with a water gun.

The pair were playing StreetWars, a citywide tournament where players spend about a month stalking, staking out or ensnaring each other.

He was her assigned target, and didn’t realize he had walked into a trap until it was too late. All it takes is one drop, one spritz from a diligently charged Super Soaker in the hand of your assigned killer — and it’s game over for you.

Welcome to the world of urban gaming, where contests of all kinds unfold in real time, all over New York City.

“Games like these give you permission to do things you normally wouldn’t,” says Catherine Herdlick, the director of New York’s fourth annual Come Out and Play Festival, a celebration of urban gaming that takes place in the city this weekend. The event features more than 35 different games for kids and adults. These games add spontaneity to the landscape of New York,” says Herdlick. Last week, the video game designer and some volunteers gathered in Prospect Park to give her Neo Cowgirl Faux Rodeo a dry run.

In the game (taking place today at The Tank, 345 W. 45th St., between 6 and 8 p.m.), players compete in several rodeo events, from bucking bronco riding to pole racing that Herdlick restyled to operate without animals. Instead of horses or bulls, players use yoga balls, bedsheets, ropes and stuffed animals to play games that actually come remarkably close to the real thing. Other Come Out and Play offerings include a game similar to Telephone, using riders on the shuttle that runs between Times Square

See GAMES, Page 30

GAMES from Page 29

and Grand Central. There are also citywide scavenger hunts, street-size puzzles and video games that use the GPS features of an iPhone to turn Manhattan into a giant virtual golf course.

These games are different from anything else “because they use the city either as a game board or even as another player,” according to Herdlick.

With StreetWars — an endeavor unrelated to Come Out and Play — players are given detailed dossiers on their targets in elaborate initial briefings that occur in strange places ranging from luxury buses parked in alleys — to a meeting with one of the game’s top brass as he soaks in a bubble bath.

“Part of our charm is that we put [our players] into a heightened emotional state that can last for 30 days, says one of the game’s founders, Commander Mustache (whose real name is Liao Yutai).

Agent Stealth shocked pedestrians on a SoHo street earlier this week when she believed an innocent bystander was actually the person assigned to hunt her.

“I screamed,” she says, when a man she believed had been trailing her reached into his pocket for what she believed was a water gun. “I was so embarrassed that this sound came out of me, people must’ve thought I was getting stabbed.” After he recovered, her shocked would-be stalker said meekly, “I was just throwing something away.”

For more information on urban gaming, see comeoutandplay.org or streetwars.net